Asus Motherboards

More features and maybe better OC if your into Overclocking

+1
I believe some offer high regulated phases and better capacitors. That's the easier way to spend/save money where few will notice/appreciate the difference (not that it's not important). Compare model specs to be sure.

but i mean other than feature wise.. like performance wise the higher priced mobos don't perform better than the cheaper ones?

Depends what you included in "performance". Generally motherboards are have much less to do wth performance than he parts you plug into them, and very little difference between them. Some are factory overclocked, considered cheating by some. But the hope is to find a board with a the features you need and won't crap out at the first flick of the switch. No guarantee beyond reputation.

okay. so if you were to buy a motherboard to go with my intel i5 2500k and radeon 7950, which asus mobo would you go with?

I've always been partial to mid-high end ASUS boards, never had a problem except for a used/remanufactured/return unit. I've been looking at the Sabertooth for a while, though many will say it's overpriced and go for ASRock, so it depends on you budget and personal perferance. Also, some will say anything in it's v2.0 has had the bugs flushed out after initial release.

It greatly depends on what you are looking for. The high end Asus extended boards, maximus extreme V and formaula V have real good guis for overclocking, 1 click overclocking that does all the voltage stuff for you. They also have built in sound cards that are made to rival dedicated sound cards. Those extended atx mobos can run anywhere from 150-400 dollars though.

The Z77 Extreme6 is a highly popular board with great features and great performance. I have a Extreme4 Z77 and its a great board

I am building a photo editing build. I will NOT be overclocking it. I may get in to video editing as my DSLR has video capabilities. I do NOT game so do NOT need SLI/Crossfire nor do i want wireless features like WiFi or BLUETOOTH.
So will a lower end P8Z77-V LX or P8Z77-V LE PLUS run at the same stock speed as a SABERTOOTH Z77 or P8Z77-V DELUXE?

Or do the premium boards perform better because they have better controllers, better soldering alloys or perhaps they implement ASUS MultiCore Enhancement better?

If your just doing a editing build.. then your motherboard isn't going to make any difference.. just make sure you get a Z77 board thats decent. Extreme4 or Extreme6.. or the P8Z77 series will do. its your CPU that makes a difference for editing

Thanks - then I probably will get either the P8Z77-V LE PLUS or if I want future Thunderbird I'll pay the premium for the P8Z77-V PRO/THUNDERBOLT

thanks, very insightfull!

I decided on the mobo.

I was about to buy the ASUS P8Z77-V. It lacked the multi-GPU features I wasn't interested in and I liked ASUS implementation of Turbo Boost and MultiCore Enhancement. It looked like that gives their boards a bit better performance at stock. But ASUS has a Canada rebate that ended April 30 on the ASUS P8Z77-V Pro Thunderbird. Coupled with a sale price at an online vendor I was able to get one for cheaper than the P8Z77-V. So i get all the wireless connectivity for free. And I am futureproofed for TB if it ever becomes mainstream on Intel boards within the next 5 years (the estimated lifespan of this build).

As a noob first time builder I am mystified as to what RAM to buy. In view of the fact I am not OC’ing should I buy 1333 speed RAM? Will there be any performance enhancement at stock speeds if a get faster RAM? I will probably purchase TB external drives assuming they come down in price a few years from now. Will my RAM speed effect the speed of data transfer with Thunderbolt (I should futureproof now rather than have to upgrade RAM later).
Is there any think else I should pay attention to like latency or voltage or does this not matter on a build operating at stock speed?

I would just buy some 1600 or 1333 ram. but when you get to editing make sure you have fast ram and plenty of it